Thursday, June 30, 2005

More on Darfur...

For the latest from the Coalition for Darfur, a non-partisan blog of which The Reaction is a member, see here (and, in particular, this recent post).400,000 deaths is genocide. Period. And something must be done about it.(For my own previous posts on Darfur, see here and here.)

7 Comments:

A conservative take on the issue:

Given the fortunes of the US military mission in Iraq, and the fact that we are undermanned in critical areas like border patrol, I doubt you will see movement from the US on this front. And given how ineptly US liberals and Europeans view the management of the Iraq war, they should probably question whether they want America involved in a Darfur operation.

So, that leaves us with Europe, a continent with more collective soldiers than the US. Where are they right now? Oh, they are quibbling about farm subsidies and rebates. And even if Europe did unify to take action in Darfur, that would involve violating the soveriegnty of a nation that has not threatened any European nation. So Europe likely won't do anything, though the French will undoubtedly continue to explore their oil interests in the country.

Europe will make a big stink about the upcoming African Aid Summit, where they will try to guilt the US into giving more money to Africa. Of course, they will ignore statistics that show 80 cents of every dollar ends up invested in African end up in Swiss banks, since the corrupt local officials in Africa know the safest place for their new money is far from Africa. They will ignore Darfur and throw money at the continent to placate their guilt, express disgust at the US for being miserly, and life will go on as usual.

Nate, I don't necessarily disagree with your "conservative take". I've long argued that Europe needs to take greater responsibility for the world's problems. Bosnia, to me, was the perfect example of European impotence.

Despite my call for action, I do recognize that the U.S. is spread quite thin militarily at the moment and that a full-scale effort in Darfur is out of the question. That means, however, that some international partnership needs to be built. And taht means that Europe needs to take a leading role.

Did you read the latest NYtimes magazine piece on the Congo? I found it to be a very spot-on assessment of the state of affairs. There was also a recent op-ed piece, also on Sunday I believe, advocating aid on a less convoluted, directly accountable scale.